12 Best Horror Movie Scream Kings Ranked

Scream Queens have pretty much existed since the inception of the horror film itself: In the case of Mary Philbin, who unmasks the cadaverous Lon Chaney in 1925's "The Phantom of the Opera," her screams predate the use of sound in film. The history of Scream Queens includes A-listers like "Halloween" stalwart Jamie Lee Curtis and '80s cult icons like Linnea Quigley of "Return of the Living Dead" fame, while rising stars like Jenna Ortega and Anya Taylor-Joy are among the best modern day Scream Queens.

But what about Scream Kings? The multifaced, multitalented, and even sometimes just plain mutilated male performers that make horror audiences shiver, shriek, and (on rare occasions) swoon? Just like how there are actresses who have become synonymous with horror, there are actors whose careers have been defined by the genre. From final boys to mad scientists and their monsters, these 12 Scream Kings are all legendary performers in the world of horror, even if they haunt our dreams at night.

You may not know his name, but any self-respecting horror movie fan recognizes Tom Atkins the moment he walks onscreen. The ultimate "Hey, it's that guy" of horror actors, Atkins appeared in a motley collection of thrillers and chillers from the 1980s through the 2020s, usually playing gruff police officers or desperate scientists.

Atkins is best known for his collaborations with directors John Carpenter and George A. Romero. In 1980, "The Fog" (one of Carpenter's best movies) gave Atkins his breakthrough role as Nick Castle, the everyman who picks up hitchhiker Elizabeth (Jamie Lee Curtis) just as the titular evil fog rolls in. He would also go on to star in "Escape from New York" and the once-maligned, now-reappraised cult classic "Halloween III: Season of the Witch," produced by Carpenter. As for Romero, Atkins can be spotted in "Creepshow," (and its Shudder TV revival), "Two Evil Eyes," and "Bruiser."

Regardless of whatever bizarre or terrifying cinematic situation he stumbles into, Atkins can be counted on to ground the film in reality with his mustachioed masculinity, whether he's battling an ax-wielding coal miner turned serial killer ("My Bloody Valentine 3D"), a killer zombie with a badge ("Maniac Cop"), or a race of brain-eating alien slugs ("Night of the Creeps").

Patrick Wilson is one of the most recognizable faces of modern horror — a surprising career turn for an actor who made his breakthrough in musical theater. Possessing the affable, blue-eyed handsomeness of a modern Paul Newman, Wilson turned up the charm as the dashing hero Raoul de Chagny in 2005's "Phantom of the Opera." He then made notable appearances in dark, edgy thrillers like "Lakeview Terrace" and "Passengers," but his collaborations with director James Wan are what made him a haunted house-hold name.

In "Insidious," Wilson plays Josh Lambert, a desperate father trying to save his possessed son. This supernatural shockfest spawned a successful franchise, with Wilson returning for "Insidious: Chapter 2" and "Insidious: The Red Door," with the latter marking his first time in the director's chair. While he did great work in this franchise, horror fans know him best as Ed Warren, the real-life "demonologist" whose investigations into the supernatural (alongside his wife, Lorraine Warren) provided the foundation for the Conjuring cinematic universe.

Wilson debuted as Warren in James Wan's "The Conjuring," and, including cameos, he has played him seven times across various sequels and prequels to date. His chemistry with Lorraine Warren actress Vera Farmiga has become such a remarkable feature of the film series that many "Conjuring" fans don't just consider it a supernatural horror franchise, but a love story, as well. Check out Looper's ranking of the Warrens' best moments in the "Conjuring" franchise.

Few names loom larger in the horror movie pantheon than Bela Lugosi. The Hungarian actor achieved cinematic immortality in Universal's 1931 shocker "Dracula" as Bram Stoker's legendary vampire. Though Lugosi's thick accent and theatrical mannerisms have been parodied countless times, his arresting screen presence and uncanny delivery of lines like "I never drink...wine" have haunted audiences' dreams for decades.

Lugosi appeared in several iconic horror pictures of the 1930s and '40s, including "The Black Cat," "The Raven," and "Son of Frankenstein" alongside his alleged screen rival Boris Karloff. Typecasting, as well as a morphine addiction that developed during treatment for injuries he sustained during World War I, led to the decline of Lugosi's career, and his final, fragmented film appearance was in the posthumously released "Plan 9 from Outer Space," directed by schlock-master Ed Wood. When he died in 1956, Lugosi's family buried him in a replica of Dracula's cape.

Nearly 100 years after the release of "Dracula," Bela Lugosi still leaves a pop culture legacy few stars can match. The heavy metal band "White Zombie" took its name from one of his films, and he inspired the Bauhaus goth anthem "Bela Lugosi's Dead," to give but two examples of his enduring impact. In 1995, Martin Landau won a best supporting actor Oscar for playing a cantankerous but vulnerable Lugosi in the biopic "Ed Wood."

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Keith David is unquestionably one of the greatest voices in horror. With his deep, commanding tones, he has played characters as vastly different as Goliath, the noble leader of a clan of animated gargoyles in Disney's "Gargoyles" television series, and Mr. Simms, the satanic storyteller who welcomes evildoers to Hell in the horror anthology "Tales from the Hood 2." In 1981, David had a breakout role in John Carpenter's "The Thing," the best sci-fi horror film of all time. In a stacked cast of strong supporting actors, David more than holds his own as chief mechanic Childs, ultimately staring down star Kurt Russell in the film's nerve-shredding final scene.

Other iconic roles followed, most notably Frank Armitage, the construction worker who joins forces with Roddy Piper in the alien invasion cult hit "They Live," another must-watch horror from John Carpenter. David also played Al Simmons, the reanimated antihero in the adult animated series "Todd McFarlane's Spawn," and Dr. Facilier, the sinister "Shadow Man" of New Orleans in Disney's "The Princess and the Frog." An accomplished and eclectic performer, his recent roles include a small but crucial appearance as Daniel Kaluuya's father in Jordan Peele's nightmarish "Nope," and he can be heard voicing the pansexual gambling cat demon Husk on "Hazbin Hotel."

With his penetrating stare and devilish good looks, Bill Skarsgård doesn't need Pennywise's corpse-white makeup and gaping maw of piranha teeth to terrify you — but they certainly help. A member of the Skarsgård acting dynasty (his father Stellan and brother Alexander are no strangers to playing horrific characters, either), Bill's first major horror role was in the Netflix series "Hemlock Grove." Skarsgård played Roman Godfrey, a wealthy, vampiric "Upir" — his first time playing an immortal bloodsucker, but certainly not his last.

Horror fans are notoriously cagey when it comes to remaking classics, so it's a testament to Skarsgård's talent that he has been embraced for stepping into the blood-stained shoes of some of Hollywood's biggest monsters. He is most famous for playing Stephen King's eldritch abomination Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the two-part "It" film saga and its HBO prequel series "It: Welcome to Derry," but he also played the resurrected goth hero Eric Draven in 2024's "The Crow," as well as the fiendish vampire Count Orlok in the latest iteration of "Nosferatu."

Leaving his marks on roles previously played by legends Tim Curry, Brandon Lee, and Max Schreck are proof that Bill Skarsgård is a true Scream King. Zach Cregger's "Airbnb from Hell" thriller "Barbarian" took advantage of his reputation as a modern horror icon by casting him against type, brilliantly utilizing Skarsgård's image to subvert expectations. Like the majority of Skarsgård's horror output, the film earned rave reviews. 

To a certain generation of viewers who grew up watching Nickelodeon in the 1990s, Ken Foree is best known as Roger Rockmore, Kenan Thompson's perpetually exasperated father on the teen sitcom "Kenan & Kel." But to horror fans, this versatile veteran of TV and film is a true Scream King. Foree made his horror debut in George A. Romero's landmark follow-up to "Night of the Living Dead," 1978's "Dawn of the Dead." As Peter Washington, the effortlessly cool SWAT officer turned zombie apocalypse survivor who takes shelter in a Pennsylvania mall, Foree delivers the film's iconic tagline: "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth."

Since then, Foree has had memorable roles in the gory and goopy H.P. Lovecraft adaptation "From Beyond," the cult classic "Death Spa," and the squeam-inducing slasher "The Dentist," to name but a few. He's faced two of the biggest villains in horror: Leatherface in "Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III" and Michael Myers in Rob Zombie's 2007 "Halloween" remake. He and Rob Zombie are actually regular collaborators, having also worked together on "The Devil's Rejects" and "The Lords of Salem." In 2025, Foree advocated on X to make the Monroeville Mall of "Dawn of the Dead" fame into a historical landmark.

"Herbert West has a good head on his shoulders...and another one on his desk." So reads the tagline on the poster for 1985's "Re-Animator," the slick and slippery gorefest that made Jeffrey Combs a cult movie icon. The Re-Animator would reappear in two more films, "Bride of Re-Animator" and "Beyond Re-Animator," with Combs delivering every line of the mad scientist's pulpy dialogue with delightful, diabolical relish.

"Re-Animator" cemented Combs' connections to filmmaker Stuart Gordon, as well as the author of the original "Herbert West — Reanimator" short story, H.P. Lovecraft. Combs and Gordon adapted Lovecraft's "From Beyond" in 1986 (also starring fellow Scream King Ken Foree), with Combs becoming so closely associated with Lovecraft over the course of his long career that he would eventually voice "Professor Hatecraft," a parody of the supernatural scribe, in the animated series "Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated."

Combs also played outlandish FBI agent Milton Dammers in Peter Jackson's classic supernatural horror comedy "The Frighteners" among many other memorable roles — to give even a partial list of Combs' credits is to drastically understate his impact on horror and science fiction. And that's not even mentioning the staggering nine roles he's played in the greater "Star Trek" universe. One of the most prolific and accomplished actors working in genre pictures of the last forty years, we have to ask: if your cult horror film doesn't have Jeffrey Combs in it, is it really a cult horror film?

Bruce Campbell's film career can be summed up in a single word: Groovy. The long-reigning king of B-movies possesses both the lantern-jawed good looks of a comic book superhero and the irrepressible comedic energy of the Three Stooges. Horror movie fans were introduced to him in 1981 with the release of Sam Raimi's cabin-set spookfest "The Evil Dead," one of the most banned and censored horror movies ever made. He plays Michigan State University student Ash Williams, who, over the course of Raimi's "Evil Dead" trilogy, transforms from a rare horror movie "final boy" to a wisecracking, time-traveling antihero sporting a chainsaw for a hand.

Campbell's decades-long friendship with Raimi granted him eye-grabbing roles in films like "Darkman," but his impact on horror extends beyond that. He appeared in the first two "Maniac Cop" films as the zombie-hunting police officer Jack Forrest, he played Officer Howard in the grocery store-set slasher film "Intruder," and he played Robert Van Helsing in the Western comedy horror film "Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat," to name but a few.

Campbell reached new levels of critical acclaim playing none other than Elvis Presley in 2002's "Bubba Ho-Tep," which pitted the aging singer against a life-sucking cowboy mummy. He played Ash Williams for the final time in the Starz show "Ash vs. Evil Dead," but he continues to executive produce new films in the series, such as 2023's "Evil Dead Rise" and 2026's "Evil Dead Burn." He'll be forever associated with the franchise and with horror in general, such is his contribution to the genre.

One of the most indomitable screen presences in horror cinema, the late Tony Todd could immediately raise the caliber of any film he appeared in, even with only a few minutes of screen time. In Tom Savini's 1990 remake of the grandaddy of all zombie apocalypse movies, "Night of the Living Dead," Todd plays Ben, a survivor trying to protect a Pennsylvania farmhouse from being overrun by the dead. His final fate is a firm departure from the 1968 film's ending, but no less powerful and dramatic.

His career is studded with appearances in the likes of "Wishmaster," "The Crow," and the "Hatchet" films, but Todd made two horror franchises unquestionably his own: "Candyman" and "Final Destination." In the "Candyman" series, he is Daniel Robitaille, a Black artist murdered by a racist mob who now haunts the Chicago projects where he was slain. In the "Final Destination" franchise, he is William Bludworth, a mortician who warns each new cast of survivors about the "rules" of Death.

Todd made his final onscreen appearance before his death from stomach cancer in 2025's "Final Destination Bloodlines." Once again playing the mysterious William Bludworth, he confesses how he gained the knowledge of Death's rules to the endangered Reyes family. Bludworth's final words of advice, which were completely improvised, were: "I intend to enjoy the time I have left. And I suggest you do the same. Life is precious. Enjoy every single second. You never know when ... Good luck."

Count Dracula. The Mummy. Frankenstein's Monster. Sherlock Holmes. Saruman. Jabberwock. These characters — just a handful of the many that the late Christopher Lee inhabited during a nearly 70-year career — are some of the biggest names in all of fiction, appropriately enough for an actor who stood a towering 6' 5” during his prime.

Among his many achievements, Lee played Count Dracula on 10 occasions, more than any actor in history. Most of those turns were in films for Britain's Hammer Film Productions, beginning with "Horror of Dracula," an adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel that replaced Bela Lugosi's loquaciousness with Lee's imposing carnality. Frequently paired with (or, in the case of Dracula and Van Helsing, against) his longtime friend Peter Cushing, Lee stunned audiences in other Hammer horror hits like "The Curse of Frankenstein" and "The Mummy."

Despite his concerns about being typecast as Dracula, Lee successfully broke out of the vampire's coffin. He was the James Bond villain Francisco Scaramanga in "The Man with the Golden Gun" and he gave arguably his best performance as the devout Lord Summerisle in the 1973 folk horror masterpiece "The Wicker Man." Always a welcome sight even in low-budget fare like "Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf," Christopher Lee was without a doubt one of the cinema's biggest Scream Kings.

"I'm going to give the people what they want. Sensation. Horror. Shock." So promises Henry Jarrod, the disfigured sculptor of 1953's "House of Wax," but that line could come from virtually any character played by Vincent Price. The impish crown prince of horror, Price could win audiences with just an arch of his eyebrow or a twitch of his mustache. He is one of Hollywood's greatest character actors, bringing charm and gravitas to even the cheesiest of horror films, like the gimmicky William Castle romps "The Tingler" and "House on Haunted Hill."

Though Price's unforgettable voice and deliciously hammy performances have made him a camp icon, he also portrayed an array of shockingly sinister villains, such as the Satan-worshipping aristocrat Prince Prospero in "The Masque of the Red Death" (one of several Edgar Allan Poe adaptations Price starred in for American International Pictures) and the depraved witch hunter Matthew Hopkins in "Witchfinder General."

Even if you've never seen a Vincent Price movie, you've undoubtedly heard his voice — he's the one who delivered the spoken word sequence — and diabolical laugh — in Michael Jackson's generation-defining hit song "Thriller." He also parodied himself as "Vincent Van Ghoul" on a 1980s Scooby Doo cartoon and later voiced Professor Ratigan in Disney's "The Great Mouse Detective." A muse for directors like Roger Corman, Tim Burton, and John Waters, Vincent Price's contributions to horror are truly priceless.

The man, the myth, the monster: Boris Karloff is the face of horror. Nearly one hundred years ago, the actor who was born William Henry Pratt lurched onto movie screens and into our collective nightmares with Universal's 1931 macabre masterpiece "Frankenstein." Underneath Jack Pierce's legendary makeup, Karloff brought the monster from Mary Shelley's classic Gothic novel to life and gave him a soul.

Towering and terrifying, Karloff's monster — resurrected from stitched-together corpses by the mad Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive) — nevertheless possesses the innocence of a child. The darkly comedic, genre-defying sequel "Bride of Frankenstein" follows the monster's search for a companion. By the time Karloff donned the neck bolts the final time in a full-length performance for "Son of Frankenstein," his cinematic immortality was already secure. His post-"Frankenstein" success was so enormous that films billed him only as "Karloff." Audiences knew that there was only one Boris Karloff.

He also played the undead Imhotep in 1932's "The Mummy" and the evil butler Morgan in "The Old Dark House," establishing horror movie archetypes that still exist today. His decades-long career also includes the colorful Italian nightmare "Black Sabbath," and Peter Bogdanovich's directorial debut "Targets," a thriller about an aging horror movie actor whose path collides with a mass shooter on a killing spree. With this eerily prescient film, cinema's ultimate Scream King gives his last great performance, ending one important era of horror and ushering in the next.